


i am not the ghost you want of me

by pipistrelle



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eponine/Grantiare Brotp forever, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I don't know why I wrote this, M/M, Modern AU, here's a thing, i guess?, i imagine Grantaire talkes the way I talk when I'm drunk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-23
Updated: 2013-02-23
Packaged: 2017-12-03 10:35:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/697339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipistrelle/pseuds/pipistrelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which nobody gets what they deserve, and Eponine and Grantaire have a conversation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i am not the ghost you want of me

**Author's Note:**

> Title is a lyric from "Carry On" by Fun.

Grantaire forged his way across the quad, pulling up the collar of his coat against the chill October wind. The drizzle, which had hung heavily over campus all day without ever quite becoming rain, had already soaked him to the bone. The discomfort was almost enough to cut through the warm buzz of wine that still tingled in his head and fingertips. That buzz would need refreshing soon; he should have been nursing a bottle of wine under the warm lights of the Musain, or curled up near the rickety old radiator in Enjolras' apartment, tending to it. Instead, he slid down the muddy slope at the north end of the quad and dropped down onto the half-wall that bordered the library, beside the shapeless beige silhouette already huddled there.

He spent a few minutes in silence, arranging his threadbare coat and scarf to conserve the maximum warmth. Eponine raised her head, uncurling slightly from that big coat Grantaire was sure she'd stolen from some poor freezing sumo wrestler somewhere. "Wasn't expecting you," was her only comment.

"Yeah, well, I wasn't expecting you either," said Grantaire. "I thought you'd have slipped into the shadows and been long gone by now."

Eponine shrugged. "I've got nowhere to be."

"And Marius told you to stay put, right?" Grantaire waved off Eponine's glare. "Come on, Ep, don't be like that. Marius texted our fearless leader in the middle of a _very_ enjoyable study session and completely ruined the mood, so I think you owe me some answers."

"'Study session'?" She raised a skeptical eyebrow so high that he lost sight of it under the brim of that cap she always wore.

"Yes, I'm definitely going to ace my exam on Enjolras' thighs, but I need more work on his torso," Grantaire said. Eponine let out a snort of laughter, and Grantaire flashed her a smile that had been known to charm bartenders over half the state. "I've got to get back to studying, so talk. What had lover-boy so worried that he called the cavalry to come to your rescue, but he couldn't stay himself?"

"I... was going to walk him to his next class," Eponine said, speaking more to her knees than to Grantaire. She felt her face heating up at the memory; Marius appearing amid the ivy-draped columns of the Psych building, the only bright spot in the whole dreary world, his smile as he caught sight of her, his warmth as she drew close to his side to get under his umbrella. "It was nothing, I just wanted to see him, just for a minute. But I haven't had a lot to eat in the past few days... I sort of fainted."

She darted a look at Grantaire, waiting for the flash of alarm and pity that always came, but his expression stayed uncharacteristically sober. "I see," he said. "And you told him it was nothing, and he believed you, so he just went to class?"

"He said it was an important lecture, and he has to meet Cosette after," she said.

Graintaire had dropped with startling speed from rakish charm into the sort of brooding that usually only came at the end of a night, when the bartender or his boyfriend had cut him off and pulled the glass from his hand. Eponine caught sight of his expression and shook her head, then stopped when it made her dizzy. "Don't, R."

"Don't what?"

"Don't tell me I deserve better," she snapped. "I'm bloody sick of hearing it, I don't need it from you too."

Grantaire hunched his shoulders against the wind and the melancholy that washed over him at the frustration in Eponine's voice. It was a bitterness he'd tasted on his own tongue, one that he still hadn't forgotten after a whole month of kissing Enjolras. Not even the love of an angel could erase the memory of the hell that had come before it.

"Of course you deserve better," Grantaire sighed. "And some knuckleheads we know deserve to have a bottle of terrible wine broken over their heads. But I'm sure life would be boring if we all got what we deserve."

Eponine smiled a little and leaned against his shoulder. The touch surprised him; he'd only known her for a few months, and in all that time she'd never shown such openness with anyone but Marius. Around everyone else she carried herself with an element of wariness, the closed-off suspicion of one waiting to be hurt. Now he could feel her shivering through her coat, and he held still, afraid that a sudden movement would make her bolt.

"You definitely don't deserve Enjolras," she pointed out.

"There you go. Perfect example," Grantaire agreed. "A drunk from the gutter ravishes Apollo, how fair is that? At least I only had to compete with Liberty, and she couldn't bat her eyelashes like Cosette." 

That made Eponine laugh, a real laugh, and Grantaire felt a warmth bloom in his chest that had nothing to do with the wine he'd been drinking all afternoon. He carefully put an arm around her and felt her head sink to rest on his shoulder. "Is that why Enjolras sent you, then?" she asked.

"He didn't send me," Grantaire scoffed, then hesitated. "I volunteered."

Eponine didn't say anything, and Grantaire glanced over only to see that her eyes were closed. There was none of the fire he was used to seeing in her, none of Enjolras' noble ideal of Patria, none of the light she reflected from Marius' presence, or the disdain that sharpened her features when Cosette curled her hair around her finger in preparation for some witty remark. In that moment, Eponine was wholly and only herself.

It was something Grantaire had never seen before, and he was certain that Marius had never seen it either. Suddenly he felt like his throat was closing up and he desperately wanted a drink.

Her shivering had grown more pronounced, and he rubbed her arm in an effort to warm her. "You're a good friend, R," she said at last.

He wanted to tell her that it wasn't true, that he was no friend to her at all; that his words wouldn't change anything, nothing could change the hopeless trajectory of her heart, and he knew it firsthand. He wanted to tell her that Marius would never love her, and most of all he wanted to have never seen her vulnerable like this, to have never thought of her as anything other than Marius' shadow. 

He wasn't supposed to be the one who cared. 

She was looking up at him now, expecting an answer. "It's all lies," he told her, managing to summon a smile. "I'm an inebriated scoundrel with no moral fiber. Enjolras tells me so all the time."

"You're a good scoundrel, then," she amended, smiling back at him in a way that made his heart constrict. 

"Come on, to the Musain," he said lightly. "I'll drink to that."


End file.
